Have you ever found yourself with a group of good friends, sharing informal stories over dinner? Someone begins by telling about a humorous event that happened recently. Then another shares a similar experience that happened years before.

Before you know it, you and your friends (or family) have told numerous stories, and the entire group feels united, engaged, and satisfied.

But Formal Storytelling….

On the other hand, have you had an opposite experience with “formal” storytelling—in school, in your community, or at work?

Your entire experience was shaded by your anxiety. At the end, if your listeners applaud, you can hardly notice. You can’t wait to sit down or even leave the event, already playing over in your mind the moments when you hesitated, said the wrong thing, or even left out a whole section you had meant to include.

The skills of storytelling—much like the skills of walking—involve many unaware adaptations that we have learned only after years of speaking to people. We imagine. We use our unconscious abilities to communicate what we imagine—using complex oral language skills such as delicately shading our tone, posture, facial expression and more, to convey nuances of attitude and meaning.

With so many of the skills of storytelling based on intricate, unconscious learning, explanations of the skills are usually not useful until you’ve already developed them!

So there’s no obvious way to get students to experience success simply by giving instructions. What activities, then, do we set up? What behaviors do we encourage?

Many of us take for granted the idea of “Beginning,” “Middle” and “End” with regard to story structure. But what do those words actually mean? Is there a more helpful way to look at plot? How does all this relate to eating a sandwich?

Somehow, we’ve come to expect creative people to work alone. Yet many of the most successful of us seek out, commit to, and cherish relationships with other artists who help us with our work…. the fantasy of self-sufficiency can be a trap. With rare exceptions, creative people of all kinds like to be around others.

Why, then, would so many people subscribe to the false idea of the “solitary, tormented genius”?

Simon (not his real name) is a masterful storyteller, so it wasn't surprising that others asked him to coach them. Thoughtful presenter that he was, he was aware of much of what he did, such as his thorough research about each group he visited and his careful preparation of his stories.

Simon's Students' Struggle?

His students loved what Simon told them. So they went off eagerly to try things out on their own audiences.

To everyone’s surprise, though, their story presentations didn’t go well.

In response, Simon gave his students more thorough advice on each story: when to speed up or slow down; at what points to toss in a playful aside; exactly when to push harder to build to a climax during each story. He created a long list of do’s and don’ts, of rules and techniques.

Sadly, the more precisely he instructed his students, the worse reviews they seemed to get.

Treating plot as process—rather than as a series of parts that must come in a certain order (exposition, rising action, climax, etc.)—open us to a new flexibility and adaptability in creating effective stories.

Along the way, this perspective will reveal to us the three fundamental functions of plot!

As a long-time professional storyteller, I had never been able to make sense of “plot.” The various theories always seemed too vague (“beginning, middle, end”) or too specific (the stages of the “hero’s journey) to be useful with a wide variety of stories.

So what’s a better way? What if plot is not a series of “stages” but a set of processes that you can apply in your own way?

We live in a historical moment where hatred and violence are promoted, not only by individuals and splinter groups, but also by governments. Is it possible that we can learn how to hold onto our true selves in such a moment?

What’s more, can we learn about that kind of authenticity from Native Americans, who have had a few hundred years of practice at the receiving end of hatred and violence?

Tim Tingle is a Choctaw storyteller and novelist, who work models a sense of connection that is rare in our wider society.

In fact, Tim’s novels for teens and young adults—mostly written in the historical past—show us something about what it might mean to be authentic today…

I first got to know Tim Tingle when I moved to Oklahoma in 2004. After my wife Pam and I had spent time with Tim in several contexts, he invited us to attend the Choctaw Nation’s annual Labor Day Festival in the tribal capitol, Tvshka Homma (Tuscahoma), Oklahoma.

Pam and I had the great privilege there of meeting some of the elders who had taught Tim his stories. But most of all, we got a glimpse of some unspoken parts of Choctaw culture.

A case in point: we heard many stories from Tim and from his friends about the jokes they had played on Tim...

Previously, I have focus mostly on one way to create a story or talk: talking aloud to helping listeners. Of course, I also work alone - writing an outline, telling the story to the air, or trying to remember the order of points in a speech.

But there is a third way to work, and, though I have seldom thought to talk about it, all three ways work together like Three Musketeers.

Back in 1984, at the third annual Sharing the Fire conference, I went to a session on “Spiritual Stories.” There, a former rabbi, Harold Rabinowitz, told a 20-minute version of what I already knew as a 90-second story.

That encounter led to a story that took over my creative life for 13 years - and led me to emotional healing about hope and disappointment.